How's GoreTV Doing?
Not great according
to this article, which is a couple days old.
However, in the months since it went on the air, Current has yet to announce any new cable deals to expand the meager distribution footprint it inherited when it bought Newsworld. It is distributed in only about 20 million households (roughly 50 percent of them via Rupert Murdoch's DIRECTV), barely half the number industry experts say is necessary if Current is to succeed financially.
With power concentrated in the hands of a few cable giants, including Comcast and Time Warner, it's a tough sell for any channel not owned by a media conglomerate to break onto TV screens. But that may be especially true for Current, precisely because its chairman is Gore, observers say. As a U.S. senator, Gore helped push the Cable Act of 1992, which cost the industry many millions of dollars by restricting how cable operators charge consumers and earned him the scorn of some of the same executives whose favor he now needs to help jump-start his fledgling cable enterprise.
"So far I would say it looks like payback time," says cable industry consultant Gary Arlen, a reference to Gore's apparent slow going in winning many converts within the cable sphere. "People in this industry have exceedingly long memories."
